(Either/Neither usage) "Nothing he is saying is meant ..."

New Member

I wanted to ask about a certain form of sentence using either or neither, for example : "Nothing he is doing is good either for you or for your friend"

I tried to write it that way but don't know if the sentence is correct, how can we correct it without changing its meaning please ? The idea is that there is this guy is doing something but it's neither good for the one you are talking with nor for someone else related to him and you are trying to inform him about it.

Senior Member

I wanted to ask about a certain form of sentence using either or neither, for example : "Nothing he is doing is good either for you or for your friend"

I tried to write it that way but don't know if the sentence is correct, how can we correct it without changing its meaning please ? The idea is that there is this guy is doing something but it's neither good for the one you are talking with nor for someone else related to him and you are trying to inform him about it.

For me, separating "for you" from "good" seems to make the statement more general (good at all for any purpose). For the general meaning, I would add a comma since then the "either ... or ..." part is a kind of afterthought.

But "good for" has another, more specific, meaning: "beneficial/useful/helpful to". For this meaning, it seems odd to put "either" between "good" and "for you", so I would leave it out. But this makes "or for you friend" an afterthought too, and I would add a comma:

Nothing he is doing is good for you, or for your friend.

But for the meaning "beneficial/useful/helpful to you or to your friend", I would leave out the second for:

Nothing he is doing is good for you or your friend.

(Oddmania's "none of what he's doing" is just as grammatical as "nothing he is doing", but it refers to parts of his action(s) rather than just to his entire action(s).)

The construction "neither ... nor ..." does not fit this context, but you could use "not .... Neither ....", or any similar construction:

What he is doing is not good for you, and it is not good for your friend either.
What he is doing is not good for you; neither is it good for your friend. ["Neither + inversion" means "negative + either".]What he is doing is not good for you, and neither is it good for your friend.
What he is doing is not good for you, nor is itgood for your friend. [As a coordinating conjunction, nor means "and neither".]